Ichiro Ozawa
Liberal Party Leader
In 1993, Ichiro Ozawa authored the book Blueprint for a New Japan, becoming one of the first mainstream politicians to openly criticize Japanese bureaucracy. He led a defection from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), ending that party’s postwar hold on power. A year later, he founded a coalition of opposition parties under the banner of New Frontier. On January 1, 1998, Ozawa broke away from the New Frontier Party and formed the Liberal Party, although the support for his new enterprise was greatly diminished. He recently agreed to merge his Liberal Party with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan…
